Kukla's Korner Hockey

Entries with the tag: jon cooper

“Hopefully they don’t call penalties when you’re getting guys’ sticks. I think that’s the only thing I don’t want to see happen because a lot of times, that’s what turns over pucks. That’s what makes a forechecker effective. He’s on guys and he’s disrupting their stick.

“So hopefully there’s a big difference between slashing a guy’s stick than slashing a guy on his hands or his wrists. I agree with that. Because a lot of times you can be trouble if you take one of those slashes.”

-Andrew Cogliano of the Anaheim Ducks. Eric Stephens of the OC Register has more on this topic.

added 8:38am, Jon Cooper...

"The game is no fun, it's not fun to watch. There's 30 minutes of special teams. I don't think that's what the league intended for our game to be a game of special teams. I don't think that's what the league intended for our game to be a game of special teams. I guess what's tough is nobody knows what the standard is and all of a sudden, you come into the first exhibition game and now they've got to completely change anything that's gone on in faceoffs, which I didn't know that was a big issue in the game, but apparently it was.

Cooper’s own marriage spans both sides of the border. He was born and raised in Prince George, but his wife, Jessie, is from Michigan.

The Tampa Bay Lightning coach’s three children are American, born on different stops during his rise through the coaching ranks in St. Louis and Green Bay.

Cooper became a United States citizen in the mid-90s. He has been living in the U.S. exclusively since 1990, nearly 30 years now, when he got a job in New York after graduating from Hofstra University on Long Island.

So, does Cooper - who is serving as an assistant to Todd McLellan - see himself more as a Canadian or an American?

He wouldn’t bite.

“This is so difficult for me,” Cooper said. “I think growing up in Canada, where the whole country lives and dies on hockey, the sport is bred in you. My passion and love for the game were born in Canada.

“But then I think about my time in the United States - my education and coaching education was fostered there. I’ve had the chance to work with a lot of amazing people who taught me well. I think both places fed into my growth, helped me get where I am today.”

"The media attention, I completely understand (it), he's from Toronto. This is the hockey Mecca and people want to know. It's a story. He's probably one of the most talented players to become a UFA in his mid-20s — I mean that doesn't happen, especially in this era.

"So of course it's going to be a story."

-Jon Cooper, head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning on Steven Stamkos. More from Chris Johnston of Sportsnet.

“If you ask any player, I think they prefer to play their natural position,” Stamkos said Saturday. “For me, it’s just easier to create speed from my game when I’m in the middle. Again tonight, I didn’t do much offensively, but we found a way to win and make some plays defensively.”

He added: “I’m going to go out there and do what I’m asked to do. I’ve played there before, so it’s at a point now where you see the lineup on the board, you do anything you can to go out there and win.”

Head coach Jon Cooper clearly prefers Stamkos on the right side, even though Cooper admitted the Lightning are “lacking centres, period” in the absence of Tyler Johnson and Cedric Paquette due to injury. He said there were a host of reasons for the switch, adding “when guys aren’t scoring, you try to open up ice for them.”

“It’s team-first, always,” Cooper said. “I don’t know, you ask any player, ‘Would you rather get the minutes or the position?’ and…I think if you ask anyone, they don’t care about where they play, it’s as long as we’re winning.”

That may not necessarily be the case with a star like Stamkos. His position and philosophical difference with Cooper is believed to be a major sticking point in his ongoing contract negotiations. Stamkos, 25, can become an unrestricted free agent after this season.

TAMPA BAY – The Tampa Bay Lightning have signed head coach Jon Cooper to a multi-year contract extension today, vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman announced. Cooper was named the eighth head coach in franchise history on March 25, 2013.

Cooper, a native of Prince George, British Columbia, has led the Lightning to a 112-70-23 record and a .602 winning percentage in 205 games. He has guided the Bolts to the Stanley Cup Playoffs in each of his two full seasons since coming to Tampa Bay, including a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2015. On April 11, 2015, Cooper earned his 100th career victory, making him the fifth-fastest to do so among those who debuted in the league since 2000. He was also named a finalist for the 2014 Jack Adams Award, given annually to the NHL’s top head coach.

Welcome to the 2015 Stanley Cup final, otherwise known as a Tale of Two Coaches.

In the Tampa corner, you have the personable Cooper, 47, who rubs shoulders with Charles Barkley, had his group’s tab picked up by actor Vince Vaughn at a Chicago steak joint last weekend, and carries with him a swagger that makes you realize just how comfortable he is in his own skin.

Quenneville, 56, is too, but in a far different way. A far nicer man than he gets credit for, especially behind the scenes, Coach Q, as some of the players call him, is far more no nonsense, a do-it-his-way-or-the-highway type who isn’t afraid to let his guys know if they aren’t performing up to par.

In that regard, both teams are reflections of their respective coaches.

The Lightning players are young, fast and, like Cooper, feel as if they can beat anyone.

Like Quenneville, the Hawks are battle-proven, determined, business-like and have established — thanks to Cups in 2010 and 13 — that they’ve already beaten anyone and everyone.

Up until now.

Now comes the real litmus test, at least where these playoffs are concerned.

Lightning head coach Jon Cooper tells Millard and Shannon that he’s enjoying every bit of his team’s phenomenal run to the Stanley Cup Final, talks about the status of Ben Bishop, and how he uses his skills as a lawyer to his advantage.

In these playoffs, Cooper has accepted congratulatory handshakes from Mike Babcock, Michel Therrien and now Alain Vigneault and he prepares to coach against Joel Quenneville or Bruce Boudreau in the Stanley Cup Final.

Thumbs up to Jon Cooper, better known now but still not a household name, like Dan Bylsma, for example. Bylsma happens to be the last coach who won the Stanley Cup with his first NHL team.

-Dave Hodge of TSN where you can read more on Cooper and last night's game.

If Rangers coach Alain Vigneault looked at reporters as if they had three heads Thursday when they asked about benching star goalie Henrik Lundqvist, Lightning coach Jon Cooper went a step farther Saturday when the thought of a goalie change was brought up.

"I'll look at you like you have five heads," Cooper said before his team flew to New York for Sunday's Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final. "How's that? No change."

Cooper said he has plenty of confidence in goalie Ben Bishop, who's given up five goals in back-to-back games for the first time since March 2011. Bishop's defensemen took much of the blame for the Rangers' offensive success, and Cooper said Bishop has passed every test in the playoffs so far.

"I understand your question," Cooper said of a potential change at goalie. "For someone to sit here and say, are we changing (in) goal? That is asinine to me."

When Jon Cooper is asked what he does for a living, his answer is similar to what a Fortune 500 chief executive might say.

“A lot of times I say I’m a people manager,” Cooper said. “That’s kind of what I do, and a lot of my philosophy is: I manage people.”

There is more to Cooper’s job as the Tampa Bay Lightning’s coach than that, and in less than three seasons with the team, Cooper has evolved into one of the sport’s hottest coaching stars. He was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award in 2013-14, and he has led his club to a second straight 100-point season and a third berth in the Eastern Conference finals, where it will face the Rangers.

Although Cooper, 47, often refers to himself as a hockey coach, he has taken an unusual path compared with many of his 29 N.H.L. counterparts. He went to Hofstra but played only one year of hockey there, concentrating instead on playing lacrosse. He also became a lawyer and worked as a public defender in Michigan before turning to coaching.

But a passion for hockey lured Cooper to coaching, and though he acknowledges that he was not as well-versed in the sport’s nuances as other coaches, he knew how to manage people.

"There's the times you think you played okay, and you watch the tape and you want to vomit and that was a little bit of how (Saturday) night went. For two periods, I thought we were a little better than we were until I watched the tape. The Rangers played extremely well, but we were stubbing our toe all night. So we were just handing them tickets to the movie, and we were a turnstile and watching them go by. We can't do that. We can't be giving pucks away, we can't be turning them over, we can't not make them go the 200 feet.

"We've got to be much better than we were. And I'm quite convinced we will."

-Jon Cooper, head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning after practice today. More from Cooper by Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times.

He was hired a little more than two years ago for moments exactly like tonight.

Now we get to find out what the Lightning coach is made of. We get to see if the hottest young coach in hockey can live up to that reputation. Now we'll see if he can summon up his motivational and tactical skills to help the Lightning snap its two-game losing streak and once and for all close out this series against the just-won't-die Canadiens.

Now we will see if Cooper can coach when coaching matters most.

Do-or-die game for the Lightning? Sure seems so. It's hard to see the Lightning going back to Montreal and winning Game 7. That means Cooper better figure out a way for the Lightning to win tonight.

Not play hard. Not be close. Not give it its all.

Win.

Normally, it's all about the players. They are the ones out on the ice who decide outcomes, and certainly the Lightning could use a couple of goals from Stamkos, maybe a helper or two from Hedman and a bunch of big-time saves from Bishop.

But a Lightning team that played with swagger all season long is suddenly facing a crisis of confidence after losing two in a row.

“It’s all about the points, so, in that respect, I like where we are at. I’ve liked our commitment level, I like how guys have rallied around and stepped up and filled roles when we’ve needed that. So, that’s been a good sign for our team.

“Overall, to be sitting 8-3-1, I don’t know if we could have asked for better than that.’’

-Jon Cooper, head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. More on the Bolts from Erik Erlendsson of the Tampa Tribune.

His team had just beat the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks to pick up its first win of the season, but Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper remained uneasy. Despite tying the road game in the third period and going on to win in a shootout, the Lightning had gotten off to an ugly start, recording zero shots on goal in the first period.

"I was looking for the police when we left the locker room," Cooper said on Saturday night after the comeback win, "because I thought we'd get arrested for stealing. We stole two points."

Spoken like a true attorney — which was, just a decade ago, Cooper's full-time profession, but which these days seems like an increasingly distant past life. Once a public defender in Lansing, Michigan, who snagged some pickup ice time with colleagues here and there, the Tampa Bay Lightning's coach has worked his way up through the hockey ranks to become one of the NHL's more intriguing recent hires.

His résumé spans outposts like Texarkana and Green Bay; he's won championships with ragtag teenagers and with men on the cusp of an NHL dream. He has a career trajectory similar to some on-ice prospect who's short on pedigree but long on performance, who expects little but is willing to go through a lot. And oftentimes, he sounds more like a newly drafted player than a 46-year-old coach.

"To hear somebody say the playoffs are history, I don't know," Cooper said. "Until the final buzzer goes in the last game of the season, I'm coming here to make the playoffs. I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but when Steve (Yzerman) offered me the job, I said, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' He said, 'I want to do this.' Because if you do this I'm going to try to screw up your draft pick. That's where we're at."

Cooper hit several topics in the relatively short session before the game with the Sabres, which he watched with Yzerman from the Lightning's suite.

He said he wants his teams to be a combination of the 1970s Flyers and 1980s Oilers: "It's no secret, you can look up the stats with penalty minutes and fighting majors our teams have had. But nobody would call us a goon team. We play hard, and that's all I ask, that we play hard and we're hard to play against. Nobody is going to be the '80 Oilers, and nobody is going to be the '70s Flyers. But if we can mix a little of that and have players that couple both those teams ... but, again, it's just trying to make an analogy."

In a summer that has been, at the very least, stabilizing (if not downright successful) for the Tampa Bay Lightning, the vast majority of those taking notice of the work done throughout the organization have come away impressed – including the club’s latest addition, Jon Cooper, announced yesterday as head coach of the AHL’s Norfolk Admirals.

“The whole thing that drew me to (the club),” Cooper said, “Was the (positive) attitude and the people they’ve brought in.”

Now, included in that very group, Cooper is well aware of some fortunate timing for the two sides to come together.

“I wanted to go the AHL at some point,” explained Cooper, who leaves his post as head coach and general manager of the United States Hockey League’s Green Bay Gamblers. “I just probably didn’t think it was going to be right this second.”

But now that making that jump is indeed a reality for Cooper, his excitement and enthusiasm cannot be tempered and he gives his new bosses credit for finding him in their search.